section 1 Flashcards
Who was Charles Babbage and what was his idea?
he was an english philosopher and had an idea to perform the calculations of a navigational table in 1819.
What did Babbage produce/make/create?
in 1833, he produced a small-scale prototype of the difference engine (which was specialized to perform differentiation)
After releasing the Difference Engine, what was Babbage’s next idea?
the analytical engine (which would perform general calculations). he asked for funding from the British government but wasn’t granted it because he never delivered on the difference engine.
Who was Ada Lovelace and how was she involved with Babbage?
she understood his vision and translated a report describing the analytical engine where –in her notes – she discussed Bernoulli numbers
What did many railroad companies do in the 1860s?
they ran cables along their tracks and these cables soon found a new purpose of sending telegrams
What was the Entscheidungsproblem?
in 1928, David Hilbert proposed this problem basically asking whether every problem had an algorithmic solution. Alonzo church and Alan Turing both studied this problem and Turing came up with a machine that could be programmed to accept certain patterns while rejecting others. (Turing Machine)
What did Alan Turing do during WWII?
he did codebreaking with a team and created a series of electromechanical machines called bombes to assist in codebreaking. after WWll, Turing assisted in making an early electronic computer called ACE
How was Herman Hollerith involved in the 1890 census?
in 1888, robert Porter hired him to find a better way to tabulate the 1890 census.
What did Herman Hollerith propose?
he proposed the idea of encoding data about individuals using small holes in paper cards. those cards would be sorted and counted automatically then placed into a card reading machine by a worker. this machine pressed a plate of 288 spring loaded metal pins against the card which would create an electric current when a pin went through a hole.
How long did the 1890 census take to tabulate?
2 and 1/2 years
In 1927, which two companies merged?
Remington rand typewriter company and rand kardex merged to make Remington rand.
Before the merging, what was rand kardex?
they were a well established producer of filing cabinets (which made document storage and retrieval easier). filing cabinets took up less space and could be expanded indefinitely.
Who made the first practical typewriter?
in 1869, christopher Latham shales made it and James densmore provided funds.
What problem did Sholes and Densmore face?
the two couldn’t find a manufacturer because of the large amount of small moving parts but in 1873, philo Remington (operator of a small tiny manufacturing business) produced 1000 typewriters.
In 1887, which two people created adding machines?
Dorr E. Felt (comptometer)
William S. Buroughs
both made mechanical calculators for adding
Who invented the first successful cash register?
in 1879, James ritty did
How did the cash register differ from the adding machine?
1) included a compartment to store cash
2) displayed the purchase price on a screen to prevent lying cashiers
Who did James Ritty sell his cash register to?
he sold it to john h. Patterson who saw its potential and called his new enterprise national cash register company (NCR)
he was a sharp businessman and started a school to educate people in the art of salesmanship
Who was Thomas J. Watson Sr.?
he was one of Patterson’s best salesmen working in NCR when he was randomly fired in 1911. watson became the president of computing tabulating recording (CTR) which then became IBM (international business machines). it was a beast in the office machine industry.
Who was Vannevar Bush?
he created the differential analyzer between the years of 1928 and 1931. this was used to calculate differential equations. these machines were built at the University of Pennsylvania and the Aberdeen Proving Ground (a military base in aberdeen Maryland)
What was Howard Aiken’s machine called?
Harvard Mark I
Describe the Harvard Mark I?
it was 51 ft long and 2 ft deep to ensure accuracy. precision was ensured by attaching every moving part to a 50 ft metal shaft. a 5-horsepower motor was attached to the shaft to run the machine this also made it noisy. it could perform many calculations.
When was the Mark I officially dedicated?
in 1944, Aiken threw an event and gave credit to IBM and they didn’t collaborate again
What were working John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry working?
they were working on the ABC (Atanasoff Berry computer) which was created to solve linear equations but was abandoned in 1942.
What were the similarities between Harvard Mark I and ABC?
they were both mechanical and lacked the ability to do conditional branching
Who was Konrad Zuse?
he was a young engineer in Germany who graduated in 1935 as a civil engineer who wasn’t influenced by any of the inventions in the US or England
What was a design aspect he decided to use?
he decided to use binary numbers he also didn’t have a team of academics but he had his friends
Who was Helmut Schryer?
he was one of zuse’s friends who asked the German military for funding to build a bigger computer based on zuse’s designs but he was rejected.
